THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK MIND
From a NAACP award-winning historian and Fulbright scholar, a history of education in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the historic ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.
In The Battle for the Black Mind, Dr. Karida Brown explores the struggle to define and control the education of African Americans amid shifting societal attitudes and forms of systemic exclusion. From the perspective of freed slaves seeking empowerment and liberation through education, to the white elites aiming to shape the future of the workforce and consolidate power, The Battle for the Black Mind explores the formation of segregated education systems and the influence of philanthropic organizations, religious institutions, and Black educators themselves in shaping these structures. It also examines the global reach of these education models, particularly their impact on African societies under colonial rule.
Ultimately, Dr. Brown presents a critical investigation of the foundational roots of racial inequality in American education, arguing that it wasn’t just about the separation of institutions—but about controlling access to the ideals of American democracy.
BOOK REVIEWS
"Karida L. Brown lays bare the ongoing fight for Black minds with precision and depth in her groundbreaking book. Through meticulous research and a compelling narrative, Brown guides readers through this struggle, past and present, never allowing us to forget the transformative power of Black educators and thinkers."
- Bettina Love, New York Times bestselling author of Punished for Dreaming
“The persistent challenges to rearing healthy, well-educated Black children are legion and solutions have been scarce. The timely and persuasive The Battle for the Black Mind by Karida L. Brown, provides us with both an impeccable history and implementable remedies, large and small, that will equip Black minds to flourish. Educators, sociologists, parents, and child-advocacy organizations will all benefit from this astute and engaging analysis.”
Harriet A. Washington, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Medical Apartheid
“Whenever I see Karida L. Brown's name on a book, I buy it without hesitation. Brown is a leading authority on American education and its impact on Black students. The Battle for the Black Mind is a vital addition for anyone genuinely invested in the intersections of race, education, and the future of Black students.”
- Lawrence C. Ross, Jr., National bestselling author of The Divine Nine
“In a book that could not be more timely, Karida L. Brown reminds readers that today's battles over race and education are neither novel nor new. The Battle for the Black Mind recounts, with verve and clarity, the journey that African American children, communities, and educators have endured in the quest for knowledge. Their valiant strivings have produced generations of excellence and enduring innovations in public education. And still, Brown forcefully urges, that has not been enough. And still, Brown courageously steps up to the challenges of our moment in The Battle for the Black Mind, matching scholarly insight with an activist call-to-action. Read this book to be inspired and to equip yourself for the challenges ahead.”
- Martha S. Jones, author of The Trouble of Color
"Karida L. Brown has graciously provided us with the results of her meticulous research combined with her compassionate concern about our well-being as we continue to learn how to navigate this insidious racial terrain we have inherited. Once you start reading, you will not want to put this book aside. In these pages you will discover that history is not some artifact from the distant past, but is simply, and merely, antecedent to all that is occurring now."
- Terrence J. Roberts, author of Lessons from Little Rock and one of the Little Rock Nine
THE NEW BROWNIES BOOK:
-
A Love Letter to Black Families
Inspired by the groundbreaking work of W. E. B. Du Bois, this beautiful collection brings together an outstanding roster of Black creative voices to honor, celebrate, and foster Black excellence.
The New Brownies' Book reimagines the very first publication created for African American children in 1920 as a must-have anthology for a new generation. Expanding on the mission of the original periodical to inspire the hearts and minds of Black children across the country, esteemed scholar Karida L. Brown and award-winning artist Charly Palmer have gathered the work of more than fifty contemporary Black artists and writers. The result is a book bursting with essays, poems, photographs, paintings, and short stories reflecting on the joy and depth of the Black experience-an immersive treasure trove that reminds readers of all ages that Black is brilliant, beautiful, and bold.
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
2024 NAACP Image Award Recipient for Outstanding Literary Work
Nonfiction
2024 Boston Globe Horn Book Special Citation Recipient
Award given only seven times in the entire history of Awards - over 50 years
BOOK REVIEWS
"This is a must-have for Black youth to experience art, photographs, and stories that will entertain the entire family.”
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
“Sociologist Brown and artist Palmer reimagine W. E. B. DuBois’s early 1900s children’s magazine with a splendid assemblage of essays, poems, and art from Black creators that aim to lavish ‘resounding Love’ on Black youth.... Enriched by stunning and expressive acrylics, oils, and collages from Palmer and other artists, this serves as a heartfelt tribute to young people of color and their ‘reflection of resplendent beauty, ancient history... and irreplaceable value.’ It’s a standout.”
- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“A beautifully curated collection.”
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“In 1920, W.E.B. Du Bois helped found The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine of games, stories, and pictures, all designed, as the inside cover of each issue declared, ‘for all children but especially for ours.’ In this new edition, sociologist Karida L. Brown and her husband, visual artist Charly Palmer, deliver the exuberance of the original to today’s kids and parents…. With work ranging from the hilariously lighthearted to the breathtakingly empowering, this book consoles, explains, entertains, and inspires us all.”
- Oprah Magazine
“An astounding collection celebrating Black joy and creativity.”
- BookPage, Starred Review
“Brown and Palmer have curated a kaleidoscopic vision of diasporic Black experience, including fiction, historical narrative, poetry, and visual content, geared to be accessible to young readers, but appealing to all.”
- Hyperallergic
“Brown and Palmer have crafted a love letter to Black families that will echo through the ages.”
- The Horn Book
GONE HOME
Race and Roots through Appalachia
(University of North Carolina Press 2018)
Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have witnessed countless stories about Appalachia: its changing political leanings, its opioid crisis, its increasing joblessness, and its declining population. These stories, however, largely ignore black Appalachian lives. Karida L. Brown’s Gone Home offers a much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia. In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race, identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in the region and beyond.
Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far more diverse than you think.
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
2019 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book
in the Sociology of Culture, Section on Culture, American Sociological Association
2019 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award
Race, Gender, and Class Section, American Sociological Association
Finalist, 2019 PROSE Award
in Anthropology, Criminology, and Sociology, Association of American Publishers
Runner-Up, 2018 Weatherford Award for Nonfiction
Berea College and Appalachian Studies Association
Honorable Mention, Otis Dudley Duncan Award
Sociology of Population Section, American Sociological Association
BOOK REVIEWS
"Breathtaking in its scope, substance, and style, Gone Home breaks important new ground. Karida Brown's distinctive and compelling voice will deeply impact both scholarly and public audiences. This book is poised to become a classic."
- David Cunningham, Washington University in St. Louis
"Gone Home is a migrating portrait of black families who moved from Alabama plantations to Kentucky coalfields, and from there to cities across the nation. Displaced by industrial decline, these families were forced to redefine the meaning of home and homemaking. Karida Brown eloquently follows the twentieth-century Great Migration and shows how it transformed African American identity and culture. Her beautiful book offers a deep understanding of both the American South and our nation."
- William Ferris, author of The South in Color: A Visual Journal
"In this wondrous and careful work of essential and classic southern sociology, Karida Leigh Brown brilliantly illuminates black subjectivities as lived, realized, and constituted in the overlooked ancestral African American homeland of Appalachian coal country. Traversing time and space, race and region, Gone Home tells about the South in ways heretofore unimaginable."
- Zandria Robinson, author of This Ain't Chicago
"With magnificent prose Gone Home is a powerful sociological and racial analysis of the lives and experiences of black people in and across Kentucky and Appalachia. Karida Brown has gifted us with a book that is a must-read within and beyond the academy."
- Marcus Anthony Hunter, author of Black Citymakers: How the Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban America
The Sociology of
W.E.B. DuBois
RACIALIZED MODERNITY AND THE GLOBAL COLOR LINE
(New York University Press March 2020)
The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois provides a comprehensive introduction to the founding father of American sociological thought. Du Bois is now recognized as a pioneer of American scientific sociology and as someone who made foundational contributions to the sociology of race and to urban and community sociology. However, in this authoritative volume, noted scholars José Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown provide a groundbreaking account of Du Bois’s theoretical contribution to sociology, or what they call the analysis of “racialized modernity.” Further, they examine the implications of developing a Du Boisian sociology for the practice of the discipline today.
The full canon of Du Bois’s sociological works spans a lifetime of over ninety years in which his ideas evolved over much of the twentieth century. This broader and more systematic account of Du Bois’s contribution to sociology explores how his theories changed, evolved, and even developed to contradict earlier ideas. Careful parsing of seminal works provides a much needed overview for students and scholars looking to gain a better grasp of the ideas of Du Bois, in particular his understanding of racialized subjectivity, racialized social systems, and his scientific sociology. Further, the authors show that a Du Boisian sociology provides a robust analytical framework for the multilevel examination of individual-level processes—such as the formation of the self—and macro processes—such as group formation and mobilization or the structures of modernity—key concepts for a basic understanding of sociology.
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
2022 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award
Honorable mention from the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Race, Gender, and Class
BOOK REVIEWS
"José Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown have written a book that will stand out for a long time and be debated for years. The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois is a guidepost that enables the reader to absorb penetrating analyses of this great scholar pertaining to racism and lessons to address it. Seldom do we find analyses of an extremely complex thinker made crystal clear. This is such a work for anyone interested in a pivotal issue of our time."
- Aldon Morris
"Overall, this impressive monograph acknowledges and reclaims Du Bois’s contributions to sociology. It is part of a growing movement that addresses the discipline’s neglect of this scholar. I highly recommend this monograph for advanced undergraduate and graduate theory courses in sociology and the social sciences."
- Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
"Itzigsohn and Brown offer a bounty of new analysis and a needed synthesis, a holistic view of the sociological contributions of a career that spanned from the 1890s to the 1960s... [The] book’s greatest strength ... is in the excavation and synthesis of Du Bois’s broad body of scholarship. Though scholars have made similar efforts ... Itzigsohn and Brown gift sociologists with what is surely the most comprehensive and ambitious summation of Du Bois’s epistemology."
- Social Forces
"In this necessary, timely, and thorough-going book Itzigsohn and Brown powerfully and provocatively reclaim and present the near century of W. E. B. Du Bois’s sociological contributions with panache and undeniable rigor. Persuasive and well sourced, this book is sure to be a staple in homes and classrooms across the globe for years to come. A pathbreaking classic!"
- Marcus Anthony Hunter
"This is a book for the times. The global protests in response to coronavirus disparities and anti-Black state violence have made it clear that the academy, too, must change. Sociology departments cannot continue to do business as usual. In The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois, José Itzigsohn and Karida L.Brown show that a Du Boisian sociology offers an analysis of our present moment where many other subfields of the discipline cannot […] The result of the authors’ comprehensive approach is an inspiring immersion into the mind of someone who theorized from the depths of his own internal pain to the breadth of world empires, sweeps of historical time, and complexity of economic arrangements."